SEVASTOPOL, June 22 /ITAR-TASS/. A traditional youth action called the Toy Boats of Dream took place in the federal city of Sevastopol at four o’clock in the morning on Sunday. Thousands of young people came to the city’s Grafskaya Pristan (count’s moorage) to put down paper-made toy boats into the Black Sea in memory of the first victims of the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945). By tradition, they wrote their sacred wishes on their boats.
The idea to hold the action was born six years ago. It was inspired by an episode from a play by local playwright Aksinya Normanskaya titled “I am waiting for you at Grafskaya” in which school-leavers of Sevastopol schools come to the seaside to meet dawn and at that time the first bombs started falling on them.
About a thousand young people gathered on Grafskaya moorage in the early hours of morning on Sunday. This year’s school-leavers were the first to put down their toy boats. They went down to the sea on a road lined with lit candles.
“I wrote one wish on my toy boat - peace. The current events in Eastern Ukraine are repeating what happened here (during the war). I am praying that my relatives are not affected,” student Yekaterina Podbello said.
Several young people had laid down flowers to the monuments of the first WWII victims prior to coming to Grafskaya moorage. It was built at a place where the first German mines burst on the night to June 22, 1941. Eighteen people were killed and 136 were injured.
An official rally to commemorate the start of the Great Patriotic War that broke out on June 22, 1941 will be held outside the monument later in the day. A memorial chapel in memory of the residents of Sevastopol who died during WWII will be unveiled at Victory Park.